Google adds ‘hum to search’ feature for that song stuck in your head

For all those annoying times when you have a song stuck in your head and cannot remember enough of it to search for it online, Google has introduced a new ‘hum to search’ feature.

The new feature is available right away on the Google app on both Android and iOS and on Google Assistant as well. (Google )

Google's search tools is getting a new ‘hum to search' feature that will let you hum, or sing or even whistle a song that's stuck in your head and let machine learning do the rest of the work for you to find it.

The new feature is available right away on the Google app on both Android and iOS and on Google Assistant as well. All you need to do is to ask Google “What's the song”, and there is also a newly added “search a song” button. Once you have used either one of them, you can hum or sing the song you have in mind and want to search for.

For now, the “hum to search” feature is available in English on iOS and in more than 20 languages on Android and Google plans to add more. (Google )

For now, the “hum to search” feature is available in English on iOS and in more than 20 languages on Android and Google plans to add more. (Google )

Google is going to show you results that are based on as close a match as it thinks it has found and you can tap on the search results to hear the songs - just as you would do on any other normal search.

Google explained in its blog that the new ‘hum to search' feature works by using machine learning tools that transform the audio into a number-based sequence representing the song's melody. This is then compared to existing songs to find you a match.

The search giant added that it trains these machine learning models on a variety of sources including human singing, humming and whistling along with studio recordings, stripping off things like instruments and vocal quality to focus on just the numeric sequence. So, the “hum to search” feature should also work even if you are tone-deaf or pitch-perfect.

For now, the “hum to search” feature is available in English on iOS and in more than 20 languages on Android and Google plans to add more.